MUSIC PROGRAM NOTES Chamber Symphony in C minor, Op. 110a Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
“
-the music’s deep
pathos resonates to
present, from the
stillness of the final hushed chords
The work performed today was originally conceived as String Quartet No. 8, and was transcribed as the Chamber Symphony in C minor, Op. 110a by conductor and violinist Rudolf Barshai in 1978. Written in only three days (July 12-14, 1960), the quartet interweaves various musical phrases from across Shostakovich’s output into one continuous, autobiographical work. Shostakovich had recently, and reluctantly, joined the Communist Party. In the preceding years, the composer had survived two denunciations by the Party and walked a tenuous line between self-expression and self-preservation. This dissonance, and the tumultuous events of the mid-19th century, led to the acerbic, emotional, and complicated music for which Shostakovich is known. The eighth quartet is dedicated “to the victims of fascism and war.” Various friends and family interpreted the statement as a testament to the victims of totalitarianism worldwide, as a reaction to the devastation in a firebombed Dresden where he wrote the work, or as a reference to Shostakovich’s personal struggle. Another close friend claimed that the composer was suicidal at the time, and that the work was his epitaph. This music is deeply and undeniably personal; in the liner notes of the Borodin Quartet’s 1962 recording, music critic Erik Smith writes, “The Borodin Quartet played this work to the composer at his Moscow home, hoping for his criticisms. But Shostakovich, overwhelmed by this beautiful realization of his most personal feelings, buried his head in his hands and wept. When they had finished playing, the four musicians quietly packed up their instruments and stole out of the room.” The work unfolds with Shostakovich’s musical signature, the DSCH motif (the translation in German musical notation of D. Schostakowitsch), which is scattered around not only this work but the composer’s entire output. Each instrument,
